I have been browsing coins on ebay and when using "silver" as a search term, I get dozens and dozens of results like "2010-D Yellowstone National State Park Quarter NO SILVER". This is misleading and extremely annoying (not to mention that the Yellowstone quarter is not a state quarter) and unethical. I would complain to ebay but I don't think it would do any good. This is fraud, plain and simple. Is there anywhere I can report this sort of thing to ebay without having to go through and report every single auction? (There are thousands and thousands of these on ebay at any given time.) Sorry for the rant, but I'm mad right now.
There is probably nothing you can do about it. This has been going on for as long as I can remember. Sellers will add as many descriptives as possible to increase the chances of someone getting a hit on the listing. They don't care whether they are truthful or not. Chris
I feel your pain, Its like that on search engines also and its because if you pay to have it listed as such they dont care.
Actually not true. This is under the violation of keyword spamming and can be reported. http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/policies.html
While it almost certainly is an attempt to increase the amount of searches it will appear in, you would be surprised how many people will ask "Is this silver?" or "Sorry can you cancel the sale I thought it was silver" ect. You can report it for keyword spamming but it is a losing battle. You would have to report have the listings on ebay to rid the site of it.
Meanwhile I suspect you could create a search query that excluded items with the phrase "no silver" in them.
Your search gets results you don't want. So you conclude these ads are misleading & unethical? Seriously? FYI, Redbook says the 2010 Yellowstone quarter is a state quarter (Wyoming). And there actually is a 2010 Yellowstone silver quarter. This isn't it. Not misleading. Not unethical. Definitely not fraud.
How is not misleading? http://www.ebay.com/itm/2009-D-Denv...041285?hash=item27f1d5bd85:g:Jq8AAOxykMpTJ2sE It is designed to show up when somebody searches for "silver". It is misleading, plain and simple. And no, "Yellowstone" is not a state. It's a national park that is in three states. Is the Monticello nickel a "state nickel"? Monticello is in Virginia, which is a state.
Uhhhh, the 2009 D Roosevelt were actually quite pricey coins since the US Mint had stopped production of the Roosevelts due to the Financial Crisis. A few rolls made it to Puerto Rico which were selling for $25 to $35 a roll. Both mints had mointages of less then 100 million which is low for a Roosy. I think the pieces are still hard to locate in circulation today. The 2009 Jefferson suffered the same fate except the production was resumed in Denver with a mintage over 400 M while Philadelphia had less then 100 Million. Granted they are modern coins but none the less, not many were available in mid-2009. Definitely not Proof and Not Silver but also definitely not the same as say a 2008 or 2010. Folks that whine about silver in the title need to understand that not every lister is a scammer or key word spammer. They list what they know and some even list what they don't know. That's why there's a "back" button. We need to get off our high horses.
I'd put away the pitch forks and torches. Could he have say it a different way, sure. Does it mean that they way he said it means that he's trying to cop views? Maybe, but I believe in the idea of innocent until proven guilty.
I would suggest that you narrow your search term to be more specific. Any listing with the word "silver" will be included.
Try searching "gold CAC" on eBay, and you have to wade through a bunch of green CAC gold coins, unless you refine your search criteria further.
Searching the word silver would get you every thing colored silver too. Try sterling silver, silver rounds, silver bullion, pure silver bars, .925 silver, coin silver. Silver is a color just like red is a color.............
Actually, the Denver nickels in 2009 had mintage no where near 400M 2009-P mintage 39.8 M 2009-D mintage 46.8 M source 2015 Redbook
For me it depends on the sellers intent. Most sellers that do this type of keyword manipulation are doing it to appear in more search results obviously. Where it really becomes unethical to me is when the price is inflated to match coins which do contain silver. It would also be suspicious if item description and item specifics are deliberately vague. In those instances I can't help but wonder if the seller is trying to scam folks.
Well obviously no one can prove with absolute certainty what the seller is up to. However if you were to message every seller that does this and make them aware that using "clad" instead of "no silver" is more accurate, less confusing, and uses up less characters, I'd be willing to bet that most of them don't change a damn thing.
